Saturday, June 4, 2016

New “Flesh-Eating” Disease Spreading Across Syria And The Middle East

As if the people of Syria were not troubled enough with five years of Western-engineered destruction, warfare, and economic oppression, a new disease is working its way across the country. Cutaneous Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease allegedly being spread by infected sand flies although the disease is also described as tropical in nature.

The disease causes open wounds and purplish scarring, a gross disfigurement of its victims.

Many of the temporary refugee settlements can increase the risk of picking up the disease because of malnutrition, poor housing, deficient medical facilities and overcrowding.

This, coupled with the favourable climate – the sand flies only operate in humid temperatures [a minimum of 27/28 degrees at night] – has created the conditions for the disease to spread.

For instance, refugee settlements in Nizip in southern Turkey have reported several hundred cases.

Speaking to MailOnline, Dr Waleed Al-Salem, one of the authors of the research was carried out in the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said: ‘It’s a very bad situation. The disease has spread dramatically in Syria, but also into countries like Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and even into southern Europe with refugees coming in.

‘There are thousands of cases in the region but it is still underestimated because no one can count the exact number of people affected.

‘When people are bitten by a sand-fly – which are tiny and smaller than a mosquito – it can take anything between two to six months to have the infection.

‘So someone might have picked it up in Syria but then they may have fled into Lebanon or Turkey, oreven into Europe as they seek refuge.

‘Prior to the outbreak of war there was good control of diseases, parasites and sand flies but when the conflict started no one cared, conditions worsened and the health system broke down, which has created an ideal environment for disease outbreaks.’

Of course, it wasn’t that “no one cared.” It was that no one was able to provide adequate care because the United States, Israel, the GCC, and NATO had overrun the country with savage terrorists and destroyed the infrastructure, not to mention the Western sanctions imposed upon the country which, alone, would have made it difficult to treat.

The World Health Organization, however, does categorize the disease as “neglected.”

The Daily Mail also summarizes the prevalence of the disease both in Syria, the Middle East, and Africa by writing:

Between 2000 and 2012, there were only six reported cases of the disease in Lebanon.

But in 2013 alone there were 1,033 cases reported, of which 96 per cent occurred among the displaced Syrian refugees, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

Turkey, Jordan, Easter Libya and Yemen have also reported hundreds of cases.

With Yeminis migrating to Saudi Arabia, the fear is the disease might spread there too.

There could even be refugees with the disease who have reached Europe.

According to the Syrian Ministry of Health, the number of cases of Leishmaniasis went from 23,000 before the war to 41,000 in 2013. The World Health Organization donated 10,000 of meglumineantimonate for treatment in Lebanon.

Oddly enough, according to maps circulating in mainstream reports, while cases of the disease have appeared all across Syria, they seem to be concentrated in Palestine and Israel as well as Southern Lebanon. At this time, it is unclear whether or not the disease is indeed becoming an epidemic and/or a pandemic or if the Western media is simply using it to stir up humanitarian concerns in order to help justify some type of intervention in Syria or even panic over Syrian refugees. While the level of emergency may be debatable, the disease is undoubtedly present in Syria.

Regardless, the reason this disease is making a comeback is directly a result of Western policies of destabilization, sanctions and proxy war that has resulted in the evisceration of Syrian living standards, health facilities and sanitation infrastructure.

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